How Does a Solar Powered Calculator Work at Night?

Basic make up of the calculator

The makeup of a solar powered calculator is fairly simple. Over the years, you may have seen solar powered homes or businesses with large panels from which they can draw the sun's light and power their facilities. A solar powered calculator works in the same way in that it too has panels, albeit very small solar panels, from which it collects the sun's light.

The process

Many readers may remember sitting in biology class and learning about photo-synthesis. Photo-synthesis is the process where plant-life takes in the rays of the sun and essentially converts that into food or energy. The solar powered calculator works much in the same way in that instead of plant cells, the calculator has the solar panels which consist of solar cells or photoelectric cells. These cells accept the sunlight and, acting as batteries, stores the sun's light and converts it into electricity. This, when you use the calculator, instead of alternate battery current, you are using energy converted from sunlight.

Night Ops

Fortunately, these cells can store an amazing amount of energy for their size. The drawback, like with a rechargeable battery, is that they must be recharged frequently. In this case the calculator needs to be in sunlight as often as possible in order to maintain a constant supply of electro-power.